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OPINION

A climate agenda

Ventura County Star
Published 6:10 p.m. PT Dec. 4, 2018

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Climate change has made Glacier National Park a place known more for evidence of historic glaciers than a site of active ones. Pictured: a characteristic u-shaped valley dramatically carved by a glacier from a previous ice age.(Photo: DAVID LOE/SPECIAL TO THE STAR)Buy Photo

The recently released National Climate Assessment claims the lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees Celsius since 1900 and that we're going to see weather events get stronger and more intense.

This may be true, but is there a definitive correlation? More to the point, have climate models actually been tested to see if their temperature predictions are right? NASA global data shows temperatures have dropped 0.56 degrees Celsius in two years (February 2016 to February 2018), to the lowest level since the 1980s. In other words, two years of climate change have wiped out more than 30 years of temperature increases.

Did any climate models predict this? The answer is an emphatic no. A recent study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate showed climate models exaggerate global warming from carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 45 percent. It was ignored. Then there was a recent study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found climate models were faulty, with one of the authors stating, "We haven't seen the rapid acceleration in warming after year 2000 that we see in the models."

In 2014, John Kerry said 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists agree there is a climate crisis caused by humans. The 97 percent number has widely been used and accepted as fact by the public. In 2012, the American Meteorological Society surveyed its 7,000 members and found only 52 percent said they think global warming is mostly man-made and 53 percent think there is conflict among members. Other studies have shown similar results.

So the 97 percent number is bogus and begs the question, Why are advocates afraid of an honest discussion about climate change? Why do they ignore almost half the experts that do not agree with them? Perhaps there is an agenda here.

Editor: Scientists say a two-year trend is meaningless in terms of understanding climate change. Also, the authors of the American Meteorological Society survey say the results were distorted for ideological ends and that there are "high levels of expert consensus about human-caused climate change.”

Bob Zahner, Ventura

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